Man identified by police as Max Azzarello, from Florida, declared dead after incident outside lower Manhattan courthouse
A man has died after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is taking place.
The New York City police department said on Saturday the man had been declared dead by staff at an area hospital.
Officials had said earlier the man, who was in his late 30s, was in critical condition.
The New York police department said the man, who they identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.
Witnesses said the man pulled pamphlets out of a backpack and threw them in the air before he doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire on Friday. One of those pamphlets included references to “evil billionaires” but portions that were visible to a Reuters witness did not mention Trump.
Well, he won’t be making that mistake again, I can guarantee you that.
Florida isn’t sending us their best
I feel bad for this guy. I mean, he felt passionate enough about his cause to feel that the only way to draw attention to it was to self-immolate. But his cause is… what, exactly? I’ve read a few articles and couldn’t really figure it out.
It seems to me he was a bright guy who believed what he read on the Internet, and when his mother passed he lost any moderating influence in his life, so that he had no one to pull him out of the conspiracy theories. It was the lack of critical thinking that killed him in the end.
It should be noted that for-profit media companies will play dumb on any protest critical of the types of people that own and run for-profit media companies.
During the “occupy” protests, it was common to see reporters staring into the camera and asking “but what are these protests about?” in front signs stating exactly what the protests were about. They knew if they fairly reported on the movement, their audience might start agreeing with the protesters. So both “left wing” and “right wing” media companies held hands and united to undermine it.
But without that reporting, fuck knows. If he’s posting on reddit conspiracy subs, they’ve become a place for extremists to recruit the stupid and the clinically paranoid.
These claims sound like fantastical conspiracy theory, but they are not. They are proof of conspiracy
That’s not how claims work, buddy.
Lastly, we string these major discoveries together: Cryptocurrency is an economic doomsday device; our government is a secret kleptocracy; The Simpsons exists to brainwash us. From there, the only research we need is critical thinking and we’re able to piece together the true story of our circumstances.
Wait, I thought we were supposed to use that all throughout, not at the very end!?
TL;DR Yeah, the guy clearly had a screw loose. Jumping from unfounded (conspiracy) theory to another. At least he was not a Nazi, I guess - he hated everyone* equally.
* everyone being “the government”, “Crypo-anything”, even a few billionaires!
His Instagram tells a really sad story. He was an infrequent poster of perfectly ordinary content. No sign of any mental illness: pictures of his sisters wedding, some jokes, nothing concerning.
Then, some posts about the death of his mother and almost right after, his sharp decline in mental health becomes apparent.
He was apparently active on Reddit and posted semi-often in the /r/conspiracy subreddit
His manifesto is at https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
He was clearly mentally ill.
I was skeptical of the mental illness angle until I clicked on the link. This guy was deeply into conspiracy theories.
I mean, a lot of what crypto has become is pretty Ponzi-ish. But yeah, he’s a bit deeper off the conspiracy cliff than that.
…and the two parties do seem to work together. Also, tech billionaires and their platforms do seem to promote and allow a lot of white supremacist propaganda on their websites.
So a lot of what he writes about seems to have a basis in reality.
Lastly, we string these major discoveries together: Cryptocurrency is an economic doomsday device; our government is a secret kleptocracy; The Simpsons exists to brainwash us.
It’s always heartbreaking when people grow skeptical of neoliberalism (and the greedy, self-serving people who push it), only to be preyed upon by groups like neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists and crypto bros.
Anywhere you find people who are frustrated, depressed or paranoid, you’ll find extremists using that vulnerability to groom more extremists.
When we piece it all together, we understand the truth: **We are in a totalitarian doomsday cult. **
Why on earth would our elites do this? There are many reasons, but the simplest is because capitalism is unsustainable, and they knew it: Climate change and resource extraction would catch up eventually. So, they never intended to sustain it. They knew all along that they would gobble up all the wealth they could, and then yank the rug out from under us so they could pivot to a hellish fascist dystopia.
Yeah I too think he was likely mentally ill. But damn if this didn’t resonate.
Lesson of the day: don’t self immolate. The most you’ll get from your opponents and sympathizers are shrugs.
Or just “Don’t kill yourself.” Unless maybe you’re about to be tortured into revealing secrets that could get innocent people harmed and you have a cyanide pill. Otherwise, suicide is pretty much always going to be too much medicine for the sickness. Things are bad? Killing yourself guarantees they will never get better.
I realize it’s easy to simply say this, but it’s still true…
I think I understand the sentiment here, but you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death. I think you’d find a lot of people can imagine a life worse than death. Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.
you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death.
I didn’t say that. My point is more that ending a life (including your own) is permanent and irreversible.
Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness.
You don’t know that, no one does.
Not trying to be argumentative, just clarifying…
Well definitely don’t kill yourself for a random political reason. Especially for an individual that isn’t even in power currently. Also don’t kill yourself if he ever gets into power, because how on Earth does that help?
But then again we’re attempting to apply logic to a situation where it clearly was absent.
Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.
That sounds better, but I kind of doubt that realistically anyone can actually understand what “no more consciousness” realistically means, because it’s axiomatically opposed to the idea of consciousness itself, to the degree that you cannot experience it. “oh I get it when I go to bed” or “oh it’d just be black nothingness with no thought” yeah that’s bullshit. People think that cause they smoked weed and it shut off their internal monologue, that’s the same as true oblivion. It’s not, it’s imperceptible, by it’s very nature. Maybe you could make an argument against fearing on that basis, on the basis that it’s un-understandable, much as epicurus did, in fact, that’s an argument I’d make, but that’s a different argument altogether.
For law enforcement maybe they shouldn’t rescue after a certain amount of time 😔? Like that was 2 minutes. Maybe cut off at 1 minute? I don’t know, it sounds so painful. One of my family members was burnt accidentally by hot liquid and those years of pain and suffering are a mark in my life and obviously in their life. Imagine 100C vs 800 to 1200C in a fire, and instead of just a single burn, continuous burn for minutes? 😞 And to survive that to live one more entire day in possible the most painful way possible.
I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens. I’d also imagine your lungs feel like they’re also on fire during it, smoke inhalation sucks.
I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens
This is most certainly the case after a certain case. The lack of oxygen able to get to the lungs as a result of fire inhalation is probably capable of putting someone down within about three minutes, if that, probably much sooner, and probably sooner than your nerves would bake, I’d wager. That’s all if the shock and trauma of being on fire doesn’t cause you to pass out or otherwise shut down before that happens, which I’d also wager would be the case for most.
Cops are not doctors and not individuals I would want making that kind of call
Yeah if you really wanted to send a message, you’d set those evil billionaires on fire not yourself.
